Ancient Chinese curse: may you live in interesting times. This web site is my attempt to document, from my perspective, these "interesting times".

Monday, November 15, 2004

Dean vs. Anybody-But-Dean

I still caution people not to get dragged into a "let's you and him
fight" trap laid by those who would love nothing more than for the
Democrats to fight more amongst themselves than against the real enemy, but this
post by Kos suggests that there is a real battle-line being drawn in the fight
over the DNC chair
position.

I always, always laugh when I hear one of these insiders talk about the
"disaster" that a Dean chairmanship would wreak on the party.

I mean, disaster compared to what? Being shut out from all levers of
government? From the White House, Supreme Court, House, Senate, majority of
governorships and majority of state legislatures?

How about the disaster of three straight losing election cycles? That's not
a freakin' disaster?

Dean means reform. Simon Rosenberg means reform. There are probably other
dark horse candidates out there who would mean reform.

And that's what we need. Reform, not status quo. The status quo is
untenable. I'm tired of losing, and that's the only thing the current gang has
delivered.

The battle seems to be shaping up to a fight between Dean and Vilsack, but
really they are just stand-ins for a bigger battle: grassroots reform driven by
a real desire to win against entrenched power with a real desire to protect what
little power it still has.

Fortunately for the Dean forces, the forces on the other side appear to be
adopting the same strategy they had during the 2004 election. Then it was
Anybody-But-Bush. Here it is Anybody-But-Dean. The question is whether a
campaign that is primarily driven by a desire to halt progress is more powerful
than a campaign that is all about progress.

Kos points out that the Dean forces have a lot of powerful arguments to make
on their side. And, ironically, those arguments are also primarily negative: why
should we continue to support a power structure that has consistently failed us
for the last 10 years?

Kos also points out that the Anybody-But-Dean forces are adopting the same
strategy of the Bushies: demonize the opposition by distorting their position to
the extreme. Dean is not the candidate of leftists. He is the candidate
of Democrats who want Democrats to act like winners.

And all this before we even get any definitive word that Dean is interested
in the job.